Ollies Evaluation

Media Evaluation:

Introduction:

For this project we were given the task of producing a promotional package (a music video, DVD case and poster) based on a song that we would pitch to the rest of the class and to our teacher for. Making a decision on what song to do was for my group a pretty easy task as we all have the same musical tastes. From the 12 original songs given to us to listen to we condensed this number in to the three we thought most appropriate (The Rifle by Alelea Diane, A Long Time Ago by David Ford and Sweet Tangerine by The Hush Sound).

We already had some ideas in mind for our music video and we had previously decided to do an animation. We came up with some ideas to pitch to the class with for each of the songs above and then selected what we felt was the strongest of the three pitches, this is how we ended up choosing to do the song Sweet Tangerine by The Hush Sound. We felt that this song with its strong links between lyrics and visuals and with a fast, catchy and interesting beat would be by far the best to do in animation when compared with our other options.

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

The band that we chose to do our promotional package for was The Hush Sound who are an indie quartet from Illinois. The conventions of indie music videos are that they are generally performance based with many shots of band members throughout; an example of this is the band Fall Out Boy whose members always make an appearance in their music videos. Other characteristics of this genre are:

· Some special effects utilized
· Usually a calm setting, but gradually develops in to something more extravagant when the music’s rhythm kicks in
· Black and white filters may be used, sepia is also a popular filter
· Tends to be a narrative throughout
· Close ups of the artist/band members
· Band members often incorporated
· Live show performances

For our music video however we chose to do an animation which is a form not often used by indie artists as the music does not generally lend itself to an animation and also due to the high failure rate of animation. We chose to do an animation because of this originality and also because we felt that it would be the best way of displaying all of our group talents. Our animation would be done in istop motion with all of the animation hand drawn on cardboard or paper. One of the inspirations for our music video was the video was a music video called The Milkmaid done by a previous group at Longroad. Their video was also done in istop motion, in cardboard and paper and it was also hand drawn. However we developed their product ideas and moulded them in to our own ideas which challenged more conventions of this music video style. For example the music we chose has a much faster tempo than that of the milkmaid and instead of following the lyrics very closely and basing the music video on those lyrics like the group who did the milkmaid did we chose to base our music video on a dream sequence idea which only in part drew its inspiration from the song lyrics. By doing a dream sequence we were able to make our video as random as we wanted incorporating clips that didn’t fit with the lyrics but still fit with the songs tempo and style. Also by doing a dream sequence we did not follow the usual styles for an animation music video due to its random nature.

For our DVD case we chose to follow conventions to aid us in producing a product that would be the most eye-catching and appropriate. We chose to incorporate our main character prop from our music video to create clear links between our music video and auxiliary products. We also chose to incorporate the members of our group (myself, Vincent, Beth and Nicola) as stand in band members in the main image. The links between our music video and DVD cover were strengthened further by the images of clouds and stars which were shown throughout our music video. Some of the conventions we used were track list, website, album title, visual link to our music video, production company logo, reviews, barcode, ratings e.g. PG, running times, band artwork, band members represented and star rating. All of these conventions can be seen represented on our DVD case.

Our magazine advert shows strong Intertextuality between not only our music video with the two main characters from the music video being a key part of the magazine advert but there is also a strong link between the DVD packaging and the magazine advert, this is through one of our group members (Vincent) masquerading as one of the band members in both of these ancillary products. Generally a magazine advert shows only the artist or an image from the music video however we chose to show both a band member and an image from our music video to create stronger links between our complete promotional package. The inspiration for our magazine advert came from a poster by the musician Mika, we chose this as our inspiration due to its Intertextual references between his music video and himself as an artist. The conventions that we chose to include on our magazine advert were song/band title, visual links to the music video (intertextuality), reviews, condensed information, release date, artist name and record label logo.

How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Products And Ancillary Tasks?

I chose this image as it is a still taken from our music video and I feel that it is one of the strongest images from our music video. The image depicts the two main characters from the music video and as they are used in the ancillary tasks as well this makes for a much stronger overall production package. Our main product (the music video) and the ancillary tasks (the DVD cover and the magazine advert) all have very strong Intertextual links with each other, for example in both of the ancillary tasks there are images of the main characters from our music video. In both there are also backgrounds from the music video in the form of the starlit background from the flying cloud random images scene in our music video. Each member of my group chose different images that we felt would be the best representational picture for either the DVD pack or the magazine advert; my choice is below.

What Have You Learned From Audience Feedback?

Throughout this project there were numerous opportunities to receive audience feedback. A part of this was during the period that we created our rough cut. During the rough cut stage in our music video project we received feedback from our teacher and the other groups in our class, we also commented on their rough cuts to give them feedback. The feedback we received told us that the clips we had currently in our music video were far too long and monotonous, they also pointed out that we had an issue with timings of clips, clip order and we also did not have enough ideas in order to progress and finish our product. However the feedback we received was not all negative, our teacher throughout the project had told us that our product was going well and gave us constant tips on how to improve not just in the build up to the rough cut but also through the editing stages.

The people in my class are the exact age of the target audience that music videos try to aim themselves at. As such any feedback from them is very valuable and any changes they recommend are from their own personal experiences of watching music videos. My group also used my class as a sample audience for each stage of our music video. As we were doing an animation as our music video attracting this sample audience wasn’t difficult as there were always new stages for people to see. Any feedback we received from them was essential as the fact that what we had shown them had only recently been filmed it was easy to rewind and change it to make it better.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the research phases of our project we used the internet in order to watch music videos created by other people for inspiration, gain information on our band and genre characteristics and to get ideas for props to use in our music video. An example of this is our main male character; the inspiration for his style was gained from an image search in Google. In the research for the ancillary products we used image searches in order to gain the logos necessary for those products; we also used internet searches to gain the information we needed on conventions for these products. (Right: group using istop motion software during animation stages)

Through the construction phase of the tasks we used Apple Macs and programs such as final cut, istop motion and Adobe Photoshop CS3. These technologies helped us in creating our finished production package by being the basis of all three components. During the construction of our music video we used a video camera to take still images that were instantly uploaded to the computer through a fire wire. This technology helped us to keep a track on all of the images we had taken, the number of images we had taken, where we had just move a prop, what prop we were moving, if anything had moved accidentally and what needed to be moved next. The program the camera was connected to is called istop motion; this is a program that is used during sequence animation. We have previously used this software last year however were not fully familiar with it at the start of our project as such we had a few trial runs in order to become more proficient.

While planning for our promotional package we constantly uploaded and noted our ideas down on a site called blogger.com. This site allowed us to blog all of the stages of our product; this blog is a part of the project initially set to us and is a priority if high marks want to be achieved. As such we blogged all of the planning stages even utilizing the school cameras in order to post images of various pictures and storyboards on to the blog.

(Above: my groups blogger home page)

We also used technologies such as internet searches during the planning stage, these internet searches provided the spark for some of the ideas we would later use in our promotional package.

During the evaluation stage we have used many different technologies for example I am currently using word to write up this evaluation. For the evaluation section we were required not only to do this but also provide an audio commentary either on our own or as a group piece on our music video, during this evaluation we would answer these question but through the medium of either film or audio, the audio would eventually be dubbed over the music video explaining the ideas that went in to it throughout and the film would either be used as a prequel to showing the music video or cut in at certain points and explain what was going on in that specific section.

We looked at examples of DVD director’s commentaries with Baz Luhrmann commentating on films such as Romeo & Juliette and Spike Jonze commenting on some of the music videos he has produced. With these as a guide we set about creating our filmed evaluation. We chose to do a group instead of an individual evaluation as the time we had to complete this task was too short to edit them if we had all done separate evaluations.